


hear me

by scorpiusismypatronus



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Emotional Numbness, Suicide Attempt, WOW I had to channel my 7th grade Experiences™ to write this, evan canonically has uggs??, evan’s suicide attempt, me too evan me too, spot the RENT reference anyone???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 08:25:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14184888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiusismypatronus/pseuds/scorpiusismypatronus
Summary: Evan's suicide attempt.





	hear me

**Author's Note:**

> based off the song hear me by imagine dragons
> 
> tw: suicide

Evan hadn’t left his room at all that day. It was six at night. He’d woken up at eleven, which, honestly, was earlier than usual for him.

He’d not been going out at all, blaming it on cramps and imaginary illnesses and headaches, whatever he could come up with. It had been a week. He’d told his mom he’d be back to normal soon but she shouldn’t wake him up if she was asleep. She’d complied, although usually she wasn’t at home to wake him up anyway.

Evan turned up his music and closed his eyes, trying to think about anything but how much he was hurting. Emotionally, physically, mentally, take your pick, because everything hurt.

A knock at his door. He pushed his headphones down to his neck.

“Evan, dinner’s ready,” his mom called.

He’d not eaten all day and god he was hungry, he could feel his stomach grumble at the mere mention of food, but there was no way he had the energy to get up and go downstairs and find a spot to sit and eat his food and go back upstairs. No way.

“I'm not hungry,” he called back, curling in on himself.

“You okay, sweetie?” 

“I'm fine. Just a stomachache,” Evan said.

“All right… I’ve gotta go to work now, love you.”

“Love you too,” he said.

He heard her footsteps as she walked back down the hall and a few minutes later the rumble of the car starting up.

He waited five minutes before uncurling from the admittedly painful position he was in. Like he was on autopilot, he pulled a hoodie on over the button-up he’d been wearing for a week and then the first pair of shoes he saw, his worn-out Uggs from sophomore year. He stumbled downstairs, leaving his phone behind, and pushed open the door. He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t care.

He'd not been able to fall asleep before three in the morning in weeks. He found himself wishing, every night, that if he managed to fall asleep, maybe he’d not breathe right. Maybe he’d not live through the night.

He buried himself deeper in his hoodie and walked quicker, pulling his headphones up so he didn’t have to listen to his thoughts. It didn’t work. Nothing was working, anymore.

The wind ruffled his hair and he flipped his hood up, staring down at the ground, at his stupid old shoes. He took a right and turned his music up even more, knowing he’d not be able to hear a car coming. He didn’t care.

Fifteen minutes later, Evan found himself at Ellison State Park, the sign proclaiming Hours: M-F 6am-8pm, Sat. 5am-12am, Sun. 8am-6pm. It was 7pm on a Sunday. He grabbed the key from the lanyard around his neck and slid it through the card reader, pushing open the gate a second later and turning right into his favourite place in the entire park, a field of wildflowers and thick grass surrounded by trees.

There was one tree on the left side of the field that Evan had always wanted to climb. It was a thirty, maybe forty-foot-tall oak tree.

No day but today, he thought, striding over to the tree and hooking an arm around the lowest branch, pulling himself up, not without difficulty. He glanced down, the four feet to the ground seeming small now that he was up here, and began climbing, the movements soon becoming mechanical: grab the branch, pull up, place your foot, check your surroundings, grab another branch, and so on. Keep going. Keep going until there’s nowhere to go. Until you’re closer to the sun than you are to the ground.

His palms were callused from tree-climbing activities earlier in the summer, but that didn’t prevent them from getting sticky with sap and the bark from sticking to it. He rubbed his palms on his jeans as carefully as possible, hating the feeling of the sap and bark on his skin.

And he kept climbing, pulling off his headphones so he could focus on climbing, blowing his hair out of his face and pulling himself up further, sometimes managing to hold on with only one hand.

He reached the top of the tree faster than he thought he would and leant against the trunk, kicking a leg up onto a branch. His heart was pounding in his ears. He was so far off the ground. He was so high up.

What if he let go?

He tried pushing the thought away but it came back and back and back and god, he was so high up. 

If he fell, would it matter? 

No. It wouldn’t.

He wasn’t contemplating letting go. He was just… thinking about it. In a purely hypothetical sense.

Suddenly, the ground didn’t seem so far away.

What was the worst that could happen? He died? Because at this point, it didn’t seem like that bad of a consequence.

Just a little further up, he decided, and kept climbing until there wasn’t another foothold, which only took a step or two.

The wind howled in his ears. He was so far from the ground. 

He was so far from… what? What was the point of all this?

It would be easier to let go.

Easier than hanging here, finding another foothold, climbing up, climbing back down. It would be so much easier to fall.

It would be so much easier to let go.

It would be so much easier to let go.

The thought was stuck on a loop in his mind, growing louder, until everything in him was screaming at him to let go, and maybe it made him weak, maybe it made him brave, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

He took a breath, as deep as possible, and the thought filled every crevice of his body. Seventeen years old, hanging onto that tree, one foot dangling, and then the other.

Until he found that it took much more energy to keep himself up.

He let go.


End file.
